Abdulla Saeed

“The whole question of glitches is central to how we provide service. It comes full circle to employee job security and confidence. If they feel secure in their job, they won’t mind telling us the things that didn’t go right.”
― Isadore Sharp, Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy

“In North America, some companies rotated purchasing agents so they didn’t get buddy-buddy with suppliers, for fear of kickbacks. I found company relationships in Japan to be so close that a Japanese manufacturer might have only one supplier for any one part.”
― Isadore Sharp, Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy

“I asked John Stauss, “To what do you attribute our success in creating such a competent workforce? Most of your people had never worked in a hotel before, and many others had never worked anywhere.” “I think I can put it in two words,” John replied. “Patience and understanding.”
― Isadore Sharp, Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy

“Tough times brought on by the Gulf War were testing such assumptions, forcing us to consider our response. We needed to come up with new ideas, do more with less, make short-term gains through greater efficiency, and prepare for long-term gains. That meant cutting every dollar possible in overhead and procedures while maintaining or boosting spending in three vital competitive areas. Number one was product quality. World leadership demanded that we maintain world-class quality, and recession is generally a period when material and labor prices are lowest and room occupancies are down. So we renovated and refurbished at such normally busy properties as the Inn on the Park in London and The Pierre in New York at a time when revenue would be little affected and customers least inconvenienced. That meant we were spending when others were retrenching. We had followed that strategy in 1981-82, and the rebound from that recession had given us nine years of steady growth. I thought the odds were in our favor to score the same way again. The second area was marketing. It’s tempting during recession to cut back on consumer advertising. At the start of each of the last three recessions, the growth of spending on such advertising had slowed by an average of 27 percent. But consumer studies of those recessions had showed that companies that didn’t cut their ads had, in the recovery, captured the most market share. So we didn’t cut our ad budget. In fact, we raised it modestly to gain brand recognition, which continued advertising sustains. As studies show, it’s much easier to sustain momentum than restart it. Third, we eased the workload and reduced costs by simplifying reporting methods. We set up a new system that allowed each hotel to recalculate its forecast, with minimal input, to year’s end, then send it in electronically along with a brief monthly commentary.”
― Isadore Sharp, Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy